Articles written by Mike Kelley

For the longest time, I've been using a 17" Macbook Pro for tethering. The big screen is great. Everything else, however, was a nightmare. I recently saw some colleagues of mine raving about a new product called the CamRanger, which allows you to tether to your Android device (April 2013), iPad or iPhone to your camera and had to try it out, as any solution that would resolve my near-daily tethering headaches would be fantastic.

PocketWizard has just announced the addition of a new trigger to its lineup: The PocketWizard Plus X. Priced at $99 (and already in stock at B&H), the Plus X offers much of the same functionality and reliability as PocketWizard's much-beloved Plus II and Plus III, but with a simpler, no-frills interface and a gentler price. Read on for the spec list, a mini-review, and my thoughts on the new unit.

Karst Country is a collaboration between artists Glen Ryan and Phil Ryan that has resulted in some absolutely surreal infrared imagery. This timelapse, shot with both RED Epic and Scarlet cameras at 4k resolution, is a joy to watch. I always find it so refreshing to see when new techniques are integrated into timelapse movies. For a few BTS images and some musings from the creators, be sure to check out their blog, which can be found here.

As most of you know, we have a POTD feature which uses a single image for a 24 hour span and then archives them for later viewing in a month/day/year format. While it's pretty neat, to be sure, I know that we could improve on it quite a bit to make it both more interesting for viewers and more beneficial for the photographers we feature.

DC Shoes collaborated with FMXer Robbie Maddison to create this beautiful short of Maddison at an aircraft graveyard which has been converted into a playground for the moderately insane. The film is chock-full of amazing cinematography, created with a number of big-budget cameras, and the color grading is just sublime. DC has confirmed a BTS

Rob Dunlop, creative director and brains behind PrettyInWhite.com, just posted an interesting and also somewhat humorous account of his purchase of a Canon 5d Mark III through DigitalRev.com. Rob, spurred on by a series of bizarre coincidences, ended up doing some research on his new camera, only to find that it had not only been used, but used somewhat extensively by DigitalRev to create a review.

How's that for a tongue-twisting title? We have all seen plenty of so-called iPhone shooters, some more impressive than others, come and go over the last couple of years. But Brett Amory has taken it a step further, and creates tangible pieces of fine art from his iPhone images, and that extra attention and care transforms his iPhone snaps into fully-fledged artworks with mood, rhythm, and style.

Now here's something I've never seen before. Photographer Mark Gee shot this footage of the moon rising in real time at Mt Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand. The video, shot with a Canon 1d Mark IV, 500mm lens and 2x teleconverter from over 2km away used the extremely long focal length to create an incredibly surreal look, which silhoutted

Rokinon recently released a new offering in the 35mm lens range, and I was super excited to get my hands on it for a number of reasons. The great price, wide aperture, and popular focal length of 35mm makes for a great combo, but never having used a Rokinon product before I wasn't quite sure what to expect. After an extensive review covering nearly two months (thank you Rokinon, for lending it to me for that long!)

About a year ago I posted a short and sweet little film about the phenomenon known as a murmuration, which is when an enormous flock of starlings gather together in one location and create a breathtaking visual feast. Filmmaker Neels Castillon was out preparing to shoot recently in Marseille, France, when a murmuration took place right above his head and he was able to capture the entire thing in beautiful high definition.

Here at Fstoppers, we definitely share a lot of photos made with cutting edge techniques and the latest technology, and while this is great for making everyday things look pretty snazzy, it's easy to overlook the historical value that photography can have. This collection of glass plate negatives by photographer Magnús Ólafsson are an amazing look at a culture that you most likely had never paid much thought to.

Check out this amazing collection of images of the world's most expensive toys. Over the last year, the USAF has assembled their best images into this slideshow, and it's really quite something. Check out a few of the images in the post, and be sure to visit the USAF's slideshow page, where there are many more images, all provided in glorious high-resolution for your desktop-using pleasure.

Being a member of a lot of online photography communities, I see stuff like this all the time. A photographer just took a shot that I can tell they are really excited about, and want some feedback on it. They'll post it to a forum or a Facebook page with the typical "C&C please." line. And it drives me up a wall.

You've probably seen plenty of Heisler's work without knowing it, and it can be said that he is one of the contemporary greats when it comes to portraiture. His work has graced the cover and insides of many of today's largest publications, and he's responsible for creating countless iconic photos of celebrities. In these videos (part two is in the post), Greg gives some fantastic advice to photographers about getting new jobs,

If you own a DSLR camera, the odds are that you've tried to create an HDR image using one of the many available HDR software programs available on the market, and you might have even created what people call 'disastrous' results. But fret not, because SLR Lounge recently released the end-all, be-all HDR tutorial to conquer all other HDR tutorials.

This has got to be one of the most beautifully filmed behind the scenes videos I have ever seen. Sigma recently released this tour of their factory, set to an incredible ambient soundtrack by Voytak and cut with scenes of the Japanese countryside. The juxtaposition of the clinical interior scenes with the natural outside world were very effective and to be honest, I found the whole video somewhat powerful. Then again,

We recently featured Kevin's work here at Fstoppers, but in this new video Kevin talks about his inspiration, techniques, close encounters with wolves, bison, and moose (those iPhones don't zoom that much, after all), sleeping in his car, his post processing methods,

Everyone who has ever taken any interest in photography has thought about attempting to take one picture a year in order to fuel creative growth or to create an interesting and varied body of work in a relatively short time span. Jonathon Britnell put his own spin on the 365 project (technically a 366) by shooting one second of video every day for a year and compiling into a very cool documentary look at his life over the last year.

If you're a geek like me, you love to reverse-engineer images you come across, view EXIF data, or otherwise pull as much info out of an image you like as possible. A recently released browser extension allows you to view the histogram of any image on the web, and boy oh boy do I love it.

As a way to spread some love this holiday season, Flickr has given us all a nice Christmas gift: three months free of Flickr Pro. Just navigate over to this page to claim the free upgrade (or extend your paying subscription by three months at no cost). Pretty kind of them! As a side note, this may be a master plan to pick up some disgruntled Instagram users while the controversy continues to brew. Either way, try it out if you're curious, I still think Flickr is a fantastic service for many reasons.